1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a multifunctional modular constructed machine building element with greatly improved mounting and application flexibility and highly decreased hygienic risks and it relates to a packaging machine frame constructed therefrom.
2. Description of the Related Art
Frames of modern packaging machines for use in the food industry are principally constructed from profile elements manufactured from aluminum or stainless steel among others because of extremely high hygienic requirements. This results in high material costs making it necessary to line up a machine flexible with respect to its product range. This machine should be easily adjustable to various sizes of the products to be packed, like e.g. from small packages for some grams of meat products to the voluminous packaging of e.g. vegetables without having the need to perform a labor intensive rebuilding thereof by means of e.g. intercoupling for each new product type (having different sizes than before). The necessity to construct this machine solid, robust and free of vibration creates another different very important requirement because of the required high production capacity and speed, whereby for a piece of food to be packed usually a very limited life duration outside the cooling will be available. The high hygienic requirement is further demonstrated in the fact that such type of packaging machine should be frequently, e.g. at least once a day, easily and thoroughly be cleaned, whereby every chance for survival and/or development of undesirable bacteria must be excluded.
Existing packaging machines fail to comply with all these requirements. On the one hand an existing machine construction offers little flexibility, due to which expensive adjustments are needed to change a product assortment. On the other hand reaching of a required high hygienic level is getting almost impossible due to an angular arrangement of the constructional elements/components as a result of which cleaning devices and means are very time-consuming and consequently expensive.